Poetry (adult)

donalee Moulton

donalee Moulton has been writing professionally for over 25 years. Her byline has appeared in more than 100 magazines and newspapers throughout North America – and beyond. Among the publications donalee has written for are The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Maclean’s, Canadian Business and The National Post.

donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. A historical mystery, Conflagration!, was published in 2024. It won the 2024 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense (Historical Fiction). donalee has two new books in 2025, Bind and Melt, the first in a new series, the Lotus Detective Agency.

A short story “Swan Song” was one of 21 selected for publication in Cold Canadian Crime. It was shortlisted for an Award of Excellence. Other short stories have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. donalee’s short story “Troubled Water” was shortlisted for a 2024 Derringer Award and a 2024 Award of Excellence from the Crime Writers of Canada.

As well, donalee is the author of the non-fiction book The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say, and co-author of Better Policy | Better Performance: The Who, Why, and What of Organizational Policy and Celebrity Court Cases: Trials of the Rich and Famous.

donalee has had poetry published in Arc Poetry Journal, Queen’s Quarterly, Prairie Fire, The Dalhousie Review, Atlantis,  South Shore Review, Carousel, and Whetstone, among others. She is a former editor of The Pottersfield Portfolio and Atlantic Books Today.

donalee is a teacher. She has taught writing, editing, grammar and communications for the past 20 years in a variety of programs. She currently teaches numerous writing and editing courses as part of the Executive and Professional Development program at Saint Mary’s University, and has taught courses at Dalhousie University and Mount Saint Vincent University.

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Carole Glasser Langille

Carole Glasser Langille is the author of 5 books of poetry, 2 collections of short stories, 2 children’s books and a non-fiction book “Doing Time: Writing Workshops in Prison.”

Her second book of poetry, In Cannon Cave, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 1997, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 1998.                       “I Am What I Am Because You Are What You Are,” her second collection of short stories, was nominated for the Alistair MacLeod Award  for Short Fiction.  Her children’s book, Where the Wind Sleeps, was the Canadian Children’s Book Center Choice in 1996.

Several selections from Carole Glasser Langille’s book of poetry, Late In A Slow Time, have been adapted to music by renowned Canadian composer Chan Ka Nin. The production, also called Late In A Slow Time debuted at the 2006 Sound Symposium in St. John’s, Newfoundland and will be on Duo Concertante’s forthcoming CD.

Originally from New York City, where she studied with the poets John Ashbery and Carolyn Forche among others, Carole now lives in Black Point, Nova Scotia.

She has taught at The Humber School for Writing Summer Program, Maritime Writer’s Workshop, the Community of Writers in Tatamagouche, and at Women’s Words the University of Alberta. She has taught Creative Writing at Mount Saint Vincent University, Writing for the Arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and currently teaches Creative Writing: Poetry at Dalhousie University.

Carole has given poetry readings in Athens, Delhi, Prague, London England, New York City, Kirkcudbright Scotland, and throughout Canada. She has received Canada Council Grants for poetry, non-fiction and fiction as well as Nova Scotia Cultural Arts grants for poetry and fiction.

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Virginia MacIsaac

Virginia writes from a coastal perch about the character of Atlantic Canada, it’s people and places.    She writes about Nova Scotia’s rich heritage – of challenges and celebrations, revealing pieces from the past that fit together, or sometimes don’t fit, that will open windows to the now.  Connecting historical and current,  articles and features, poetry and back-of-the-book indexes, and collaborating with other writers, rounds out her non-fiction. She contributes articles to a column at the Inverness Oran and has a short story published. You might hear her several times a year as a community correspondent on CBC radio. At other times she’s an archivist at a cultural centre and is a member of the Shean Poets & Writers.

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Martine Jacquot

Martine Jacquot is a prolific writer who writes in French but can make presentations in either French or English. She has published over 30 books so far (novels, poetry, short-stories, essays and novels for young readers).

She has been invited to many literary events across Canada and abroad, namely to Lafayette’s book festival during the 2nd World Acadian Congress in 1999, to Tunisia to attend a panel of women writers in 2000, the International Poetry Festival in Trois-Rivières, the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival and to the Paris Book Fair in 2004 and 2006.

She did several reading tours: Tunisia in 2000, Russia and Cameroon in 2008, Morocco in 2010, Roumania in 2011, India in 2012.

She holds several degrees: BA from La Sorbonne, Paris, 3 MA degrees from La Sorbonne, Acadia and Dalhousie, a BJ from the University of Kings College and a PHD from Dalhousie University. She has studied and lived in France, England, Switzerland and Canada.

Past Vice President of the Association des Écrivains Acadiens, past president of the Conseil Culturel Acadien de la Nouvelle-Écosse, she has been on many editorial committees, member of several juries, has received creation grants and travel grants both from the Canada Council for the arts and the NS Arts Council. Her novel Les oiseaux de nuit finissent aussi par s’endormir was short listed for the Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie award. She was thrice finalist for the Éloizes awards, once as a writer, and twice as a cultural journalist. She was shortlisted for the France-Acadie Award three times for Au Gré du Vent (2006), Le jardin d’herbes aromatiques (2006) and Le silence de la neige (2008). She won the Award Prix Européen de l’ADELF with a special mention 2007 for Au gré du vent. She has also been chosen on 2 occasions to advise beginning authors, once by the Talent Trust of NS, once by the Association des auteurs de l’Ontario. Some of her poems and short stories have been broadcast on SRC. One of her stories was staged in Ottawa at the Théâtre Trillium. She was a member of the Board of Governors of the NS Museum for 12 years and an author in residence with the ArtsInfusion program and Fecane program

Her articles and interviews have appeared in LittéRéalité, Ancrage, Arcade, Alpha Arts magazine, Eloizes, Femmes d’Action, The Fiddlehead, Liason, Studies in Canadian Literature, Vent’d’est, Waves, Ashtarowt and Al Quds, among others. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Concerto pour huit voix, La Diversité: 15 nouvelles francophones á travers le monde, Ecphore Anthology 1987, Eloizes, Les Elytres du Hanneton, Herspectives, Liaison, Lieux d’être, Littéréalité, Les Maritimes, Mensuel, 25 Offerta Speziale, Poetry Halifax-Dartmouth, The Pottersfield Portfolio, Reflets Maritimes 2, Voices and Echoes: Stories and Poems of Women’s Spirituality, Walk through Paradise, La Poésie acadienne and Pour l’Amour de toi, among others. Some of her work is being translated into English, Russian, Portugese, Italian, Basque and Arabic.

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Joanne Jefferson

Joanne Jefferson has been passionately involved in the Nova Scotia writing community ever since she helped create Quod Libet, the QEH arts and literary magazine in 1981. She was a contributing editor with the Halifax-based newspaper, Pandora; a founding member of the Oxford Street Writers Group; and she helped establish Community of Writers, a Tatamagouche Centre program. Joanne has also been a teacher at Write Here, Write Now, the Centre’s March Break program for young writers. She facilitates hands-on writing, performance, and zine-making workshops for creators of all ages.

Joanne’s first novel, Lightning and Blackberries, was released by Nimbus Publishing in April 2008. Her short fiction, poetry, and personal essays have been published in various anthologies, including The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, and her non-fiction work has appeared in Saltscapes, The Chronicle Herald, and The Globe and Mail. She also works as a freelance editor.

Born and raised in Halifax, Joanne now makes her home in West LaHave, Lunenburg County. She received a BA from Acadia and an MA from Dalhousie. er other passions include music, visual art, history, and baseball.

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Penny Ferguson

Born in 1957 in Storeytown, New Brunswick, Penny Ferguson attended Nova Scotia Teachers College (A.Ed.) and Acadia University (B.Ed., & B.A.). While studying at Acadia, Penny edited Alpha Arts Magazine for three years. She taught full and part-time in public and private schools in Nova Scotia, served as the Writer-in-residence at the N.S.T.C., and visited numerous schools and colleges to give writing workshops. She also participated in many public readings and offered workshops in Canada and in England.

Her poetry, short stories and art work have appeared in publications in Canada, the US and England in The New Quarterly, Room of One’s Own, The Antigonish Review, Cormorant, A Maritime Christmas, New Stories and Memories of the Season (2008), In The Open(Roseway, 1996), The Nashwaak Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, Canadian Author, Minus Tides, Shout and Speak Out Loud, Tulane Review, Poetechniciens, The Gentle Reader and other journals.

Her work has been broadcast on Bragg Community Network TV; CBC Radio Weekend (Nfld.); Ashes, Paper and Beans (radio, NB); Ryerson Radio (Toronto); University of Toronto Radio and BBC (Newcastle, England).

A founding member of The Amethyst Review, Penny also freelanced with Truro Magazine, judged provincial and national poetry and short story competitions and edited two books of poetry. Penny is a past president of the Canadian Poetry Association. She also writes gospel songs, with four CDs to her credit (Going to Live Forever; Let the Rafters Ring; Oh, How the Angels Sang; and On that Day). Let the Rafters Ring (2006), Oh, How the Angels Sang (2006) and On that Day (2007) were nominated by Music Nova Scotia for Inspirational Recording for the Year. She has also published a Senior Adult Choir Christmas Musical (SATB), Follow the Star to Calvary.

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Sue Goyette

Sue Goyette lives in Halifax and has published four books of poems, The True Names of Birds, Undone and outskirts from Brick Books, and Ocean, published by Gaspereau Press in April 2013. Her novel, Lures (HarperCollins), was published in 2002.

Sue has been nominated for several awards including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther, the Gerald Lampert, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book Award and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Selections of her work won the 2008 CBC Literary Prize for Poetry, the 2010 Earle Birney Award and the 2011 Bliss Carman Poetry Award. She is the recipient of a Nova Scotia Established Artist Award as well as the Pat Lowther and Atlantic Poetry Awards.

Her poetry has appeared on the Toronto subway system, in wedding vows and spray-painted on a sidewalk somewhere in St. John, New Brunswick. Sue has taught at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Sage Hill Experience and currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University.

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Sylvia D Hamilton

Sylvia D. Hamilton is a Nova Scotian filmmaker and writer. Through her work as a filmmaker and artist, she has brought the life experiences of African Nova Scotians to the mainstream of Canadian arts. Her first film, Black Mother Black Daughter, has been seen in over forty film festivals throughout North America and Europe, and her films have gone on to win awards and be screened in festivals in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. Speak It! From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia received both the 1994 Maeda Prize awarded by the NHK-Japan Broadcasting Corporation, and a 1994-Gemini Award. Her most recent film is Portia White: Think On Me, a documentary about the extraordinary Canadian contralto who was known as Canada? Marian Anderson. It has been widely broadcast on VISION TV, BRAVO! and national and regional CBC TV.

Her writing (literary and non-fiction) has appeared in a variety of Canadian journals and anthologies. She was a contributor to and co-editor of We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History published by the University of Toronto Press in 1993.

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Greg Cook

Gregory M. Cook was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. As one of three poets in his immediate family, he has made writers and their survival a personal and a professional study. His biography of his close friend of twenty years, One Heart, One Way/ Alden Nowlan: A Writer’s Life, was undertaken following a two-year appointment as writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. More recently he has lived in Toronto, Fredericton, and Saint John, New Brunswick, where he is writing a biography of his friend, novelist Ernest Buckler (1908-1984).

Cook has read from his works in schools and universities in all Canadian provinces, and the Yukon where he was in residence at Berton House Writers’ Retreat – as well as in Maine and Georgia, USA; England; the Netherlands; and Germany. He is a member of Writers’ Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets and the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, and an honourary member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

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Lynn Davies

Lynn is the author of three collections of poetry. Her poems have been featured on CBC radio and translated into French and Spanish. Lynn’s poems and stories for children have appeared in anthologies and magazines. Her essays, reviews, and freelance pieces have been published in many magazines and journals.

Lynn was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. She lived in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia for 18 years, and now lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she works part time at Westminster Books. She’s taught creative writing through Continuing Education in Halifax and Fredericton, at the Maritime Writers’ Workshop, and at the University of New Brunswick. She has served on the WFNS and WFNB executive boards.

For more information about Lynn, her books, and author visits, please visit www.lynndavies.ca or e-mail Lynn at lynn@lynndavies.ca

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Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children, writing for young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca